The John James Newsletter No. <208>

The John James Newsletter 208

3 December 2017

The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close…. We are entering a period of consequences

Winston Churchill

If net neutrality is eliminated, they will restructure how the Internet works, creating information superhighways for corporate and political elites and digital dirt roads for those who cannot afford the corporate tolls.

John Nichols

Pine Gap: Is it in Australia’s best interest to contribute data for drone assassinations and targeting nuclear weapons.

Richard Tanter

The richer we are, the bigger our footprint, regardless of our good intentions

George Monbiot

How can you have a war on terrorism when war itself is terrorism?

Howard Zinn

Trump and the Saudis have helped the Iranians achieve what years of repression could never: widespread public support for the hard-line view that the US and SA cannot be trusted and that Iran is now capable of staring down its enemies

Thomas Erdbrink

Manus Island as a humanitarian crisis that was entirely preventable and a policy to avoid Australia’s international obligations

UN High Commissioner for Refugees

Solar and wind are now the leading new installations worldwide, with coal third

These pools of severe warmth at the ocean surface have, during recent years, fuelled all kinds of climate change related extreme weather ranging from droughts to floods to record hurricanes. Ocean temperatures as high as 4.5C above average. This is an extreme climate and severe weather-triggering feature related to climate change. One that has also been associated with strong, persistent atmospheric ridges and related high pressure systems.

From Pine Gap, the US controls satellites that gather information used to pinpoint airstrikes around the world and target nuclear weapons, among other military and intelligence tasks, The station is involved in real-time contributions to the US global military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. contributes data for CIA drone operations in countries in which the US is not at war — Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and so forth. It is also critically important in whatever the US is going to do on the Korean Peninsula.

Making the US arsenal more usable requires altering existing doctrine to eliminate restraints on how such weapons may be deployed and producing a new generations of nuclear tactical battlefield strikes. Both are expected in the first nuclear posture review by the end of this year or early in 2018.

Japan is poised to flood the Pacific with one million tons of radioactive water

The amount of radioactive water at Fukushima is still growing by 150 tons a day. The water is stored on site in around 900 large and densely packed tanks. The government has been urged to release the water into the ocean.

According to multiple reports China is planning to send elite military units to Syria to assist the Syrian Army. A focus will be on Chinese Islamist foreign fighters, who have shown up in increasing numbers in Syria’s north.

Tell it to “Help me speak Japanese” and then start speaking in English, the phone’s speakers will output your translated words as you speak them. The other party’s reply in Japanese will then play into your ear through the Pixel Buds. There appeared to be virtually zero lag time during the translation,

This fall marks 20 years since NASA has continuously observed not just the physical properties of our planet, but the one thing that makes Earth unique among the thousands of other worlds we’ve discovered: Life.

British Library project discovers two new words – a bit of language fun at the end

Our callout for dialectal words and phrases uncovered two words unknown to British Library researchers working on the Evolving English WordBank It’s not every day you discover a new word, or at least a new meaning for an old word. “Webs” and “trabs” – both of which can mean trainers and were contributed from Liverpool – were just two

A secret deal that let hundreds of ISIS [I-CIA-SIS] fighters and their families escape from Raqqa, under the gaze of the US and British-led coalition and Kurdish-led forces who control the city. A convoy included some of ISIS’s most notorious members and — despite reassurances — dozens of foreign fighters. Some of those have spread out across Syria, even making it as far as Turkey.

The Raqqa Exodus: The US Coalition’s “Secret Deal” to Allow ISIS-Daesh Terrorists to Escape

“Our intention is that the foreign fighters do not survive the fight to return home to north Africa, to Europe, to America, to Asia, to Africa. We are not going to allow them to do so” said James Mattis …. So???

Erdogan has accused Washington of betraying Ankara and providing “a lot of dollars” to the Islamic State terrorists. The allegation comes just days after the US acknowledged that it allowed hundreds of armed ISIS militants to escape the besieged Syrian city of Raqqa.

For some time, it has been warmer than the 1.5°C guardrail that the Paris Agreement promised should not be crossed. This conclusion follows from above analysis of NASA land+ocean data 1880-October 2017, adjusted by 0.59°C to cater for the rise from preindustrial and with a trend added that also indicates that the global temperature looks set to cross the 2°C guardrail soon, with 2021 falling within the margins of the trend line.

Australia built a hell for refugees on Manus. The shame will outlive us all

It is hard to say what is most horrifying in this long saga but the intent of the Australian government to now abandon the refugees it kidnapped, scattering them across an impoverished and corrupt country with a notorious reputation for violence, is an affront to any notions of humanity or decency. Now we are seen globally as the inventors of a particularly vile form of 21st century repression, in which the innocent are subjected to suffering in a prison where the crime is never named, no sentence is ever passed, and punishment is assured. For this achievement Australia now enjoys the praise of European neo-fascists and American white supremacists. Some praise. Some achievement.

The devastation wrought by Hitler pales into insignificance compared with the risks to which we are now exposed by the government’s refusal to adopt sensible climate policy. The period of consequences is upon us

The Cost of Wind and Solar is Now Lower Than Pretty Much Everything Else

During October, in Australia, something rather strange and hopeful happened. Grid prices for electricity rose. Power customers, fed up with this, en masse decided to purchase 100 megawatts of rooftop solar in a single month. How did this come to pass?

What’s the net cost of using renewables to hit Australia’s climate target? Nothing

Modelling shows that renewable energy can help our emissions reduction target for free, because the cost of electricity from new-built wind and solar will be cheaper than replacing old fossil fuel generators with new ones.

After the state-wide blackout that put the whole idea of turning the state into a renewable energy laboratory into question, it turned out to be a reality check about Australia’s ageing and dysfunctional grid. At the start of what could be a long, hot summer, the official opening of the world’s biggest lithium-ion battery. When they say they intend to make the state “self sufficient” in energy, and even promise to “go it alone”, they are not kidding.

Traditional energy models no longer work. By 2050, customers could supply up to 45 per cent of electricity, and electric vehicle uptake could increase significantly, This would drive the change to a consumer-based energy revolution. As the cost of grid-sources power continues to rise, and the cost of solar and storage continue to fall, customers would inevitably turn to their own means.

For example, Verizon owns Yahoo. In the absence of net neutrality regulations, Verizon could penalize customers who utilize a search engine other than Yahoo (by throttling connection speeds, for instance), if not prevent them from accessing another search engine at all. Having this much control, they could also ensure customers were seeing only the ads they want them to see. https://futurism.com/welcome-2018-net-neutrality-dystopia-reality/

If Trump Repeals Net Neutrality, Elites Will Rule the Internet—and the Future

“This naked corporatism is Washington at its worst,” Net-neutrality protections assure that the essential democratic discourse on the Web cannot be bartered off to the highest bidder. They have worked for years. They want to overturn guarantees of an open Internet because those guarantees get in their way of their profiteering.

Twitter has declared they are banning RT and Sputnik from advertising in its platform. Now all the major social networking platforms as well as Google has implemented a de facto ban and all independent sites are branded as fake news and deranked from search results and removed from news feeds. It’s a clear murder of democracy.

The cost of Brexit is already turning Britain into a second-rung nation

Britain now lags France and debt-ridden Italy, too. Here is a classic case of unintended consequences. They wanted to keep immigrants out, and are losing their prosperity to do so. Then the English themselves will start to emigrate.

A six-month undercover investigation reveals how Israel penetrates different levels of British democracy. The evidence raises serious questions about whether accusations of anti-Semitism are used to stifle political debate.

“We can grow these corals from microscopic larvae to dinner-plate size, breeding corals in just three years.” No reef system on the planet is now healthier than it was 35 years ago. In South-East Asia, which is the center of marine biodiversity on the planet, it’s estimated that 95% of those reefs are highly degraded and are facing serious threats in the coming decades.

Who is making money from the opioid crisis? Meet the Sackler Family. The similarities in business models between Purdue pharmaceuticals, the Slacker family, and “El Chapo” Guzman, plus how corporate liability is harder to prosecute than their criminal counterparts is illuminated

Besides the fact that the majority were holistic, there is another common theme; they all cared deeply and were passionate about health. I have endless emails from their friends, patients, neighbors, loved ones, and family members. It’s clear they were adored by many.

Danish school is completely covered with over 12,000 sea green solar panels

The 25,000-square-meter school in Denmark is covered with a whopping 12,000 solar panels, which provide more than half of its electricity needs. Unlike most solar-powered buildings, the panels aren’t solely relegated to the school’s rooftop. In fact, more than 6,000 square meters of the facade is clad in sea-foam hued photovoltaics.

“The Syrian people will have to determine their own future and agree on the principles of their own statehood. It is obvious that the process of reform will not be easy and will require compromises and concessions from all participants, including of course the government of Syria.” Putin urged Iran and Turkey to start a discussion with him on the reconstruction of Syria. “Given the colossal scale of the destruction it would be possible to think together about the development of a comprehensive program for Syria,”

Following the victory of the Syrian army over the “Islamic State” group in the town of Albu Kamal in the northeast of the country, the road between Tehran, Baghdad, Damascus and Beirut has become safe. The US tried to block the road between Tehran and Beirut at the level of Albu Kamal by forcing the Kurdish forces into a frantic race, but Washington failed to achieve its goals.